5 Keys for Church Leaders: Building a Strong, Vibrant, and Growing Church

Eleven Reasons Why Home Fellowship Groups Usually Fail

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To ask other readers questions about 5 Keys for Church Leaders , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about 5 Keys for Church Leaders. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. May 09, Julie Golding Page rated it liked it Shelves: A clear, concise and helpful exploration of what it means to look at your church and community with missional eyes.

Our bishop Anglican is having all clergy in our diocese read it, and I'm thinking of introducing it as a study book for our vestry in the fall. Short chapters and interesting but colloquial style make it easy to read, understand and discuss. Frank rated it really liked it May 19, Terry Moore rated it it was ok Oct 08, Alison Pelegrin rated it liked it Nov 12, Kevin rated it it was amazing Jan 14, Billie rated it it was amazing May 20, Susan rated it it was amazing Nov 11, Robert Hathaway rated it liked it Jan 03, Jennifer Brooke-Davidson rated it liked it Mar 14, Annette Yan marked it as to-read Jul 18, Joanna Crawford added it Jun 30, Clearly, they did not feel the large meetings were enough by themselves.

It should be obvious that an impersonal atmosphere will result if we only hold only very large meetings. The local church should encourage a network of close relationships in its congregation because real community must be based on close relationships.

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Smaller group meeting formats such as those described in this passage would be ideal for fostering such relationships. In another case, Paul reminded the Ephesian elders that he had exhorted them both "publicly and from house to house. But Paul did not limit his speaking ministry to the large meeting place, even though one was available.

Paul apparently refers to several home churches in the city of Rome Romans It seems clear from these and other references that operating a cluster of home churches in each city was common practice. These home groups continued to work together under the same elders.

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It is probably significant that no church buildings have been found from the earliest period of the church 33— AD. Every church with a building faces the challenge of resisting people's tendency to view the building as the church. At Xenos, we have refused to build or to expand our building until we see a high degree of involvement in home groups. Otherwise, by expanding the building we would only worsen the problem of superficial involvement in the local church.

New Testament principles surrounding the issues of body life, spiritual gifts, and the fact that real spiritual ministry is the business of every member in the local church can not be effectively brought into practice in a large group setting. Only then will they be able to meet those needs on an individual level. Unfortunately, when churches attempt to initiate a small group ministry, they sometimes fail to teach and persuate their people that the purpose of the meeting is to practice these biblical principles. The result is sometimes a wrong impression on the part of most participants.

The first order of business in beginning this kind of ministry is to launch a teaching offensive in the church. The goal would be to establish an understanding and a vision of the New Testament model and the spiritual goals associated with lay mobilization in the minds of the participants. The Bible teaches that spiritual criteria must be used to select leaders. Too often, however, the church will designate men and women for leadership on the basis of secular abilities, job status, levels of financial giving, or seniority in the church.

The result is usually a meeting that is not very spiritually edifying or appealing. After leaders have been selected on the basis of character and knowledge, they should also be evaluated on the basis of actual function, or role. In many of our churches, it may be very difficult to determine who our authentic leaders are. This is because they have not had ample opportunity to try their hand at leadership. In these cases, we will have to pick leaders on the basis of the best criteria possible. Later, when lay-led groups are in place, it should be possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the work done by the more committed members of the group.

Other things being equal, the more effective workers should be the first to be moved forward. If the home fellowship is to be fashioned after the Biblical examples of house churches, then the leaders of the groups should be allowed to run their groups the way the leaders of the New Testament house churches ran theirs.

Since the New Testament instructs readers to respect their leaders and to follow their lead in the running of the home church, we can assume those leaders had many decisions delegated to them. Sometimes, churches impose a structure upon the small group that is too restrictive.

5 Keys for Church Leaders - Building a Strong, Vibrant, and Growing Church (Electronic book text)

This structure may include a pre-planned curriculum for study, and a long list of policy restrictions. The effect is usually to stifle initiative and sap motivation. The leaders realize very quickly that they are functioning as agents for the existing leadership of the church, but that they themselves are leaders in name only.

When the church requires the home group leaders to check in on virtually all decisions, it clearly suggests that they are incompetent to make their own decisions. Sometimes they are incompetent, but the church must see the challenge in this, rather than accepting the status quo. Similarlly, pre-planned curriculum often actually scripts the meeting and requires little creativity or expertise on the part of group leaders.

Indeed, the main reason for scripting the meeting is usually the feeling that group leaders have no expertise of their own. Such lack of expertise points in turn to a weak equipping ministry in the church. Failure to train leaders to a sophisticated level results in leaders who must be led by the hand at all times. When this happens, leaders often highly competent and educated at their secular jobs realize that anyone could follow the simple script, and consequently, they are not challenged.

5 Keys for Church Leaders: Building a Strong, Vibrant, and Growing Church

They lose interest in leading, and begin to call on the leadership to be passed around the group. They fail to take possession of the role of home group leader as a worth while life goal. We believe churches are often too impatient when trying to move from a program-based model to a home group model of church life, and therefore they grossly underestimate the level of training and equipping needed to develop effective leaders. Impatience may also signal lack of commitment, because in-depth equipping is expensive in both dollars and man hours for the church's leaders.

We don't believe the central leadership of the church should forsake all control over the actions of home fellowship leaders, because lay leaders are usually not as well trained as seminary graduates, or as experienced as the church's top leadership. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully weigh which areas are left to the discretion of the home leaders, and which areas need to be cleared with the higher authority of the church.

The point in making this decision is to arrive at a balance that will prevent serious errors from occurring even though we never have a guarantee that all problems can be prevented , while delegating real decision-making authority to the home fellowship leaders. While quality fellowship and support is one of the rewards of small group ministry, it is an inadequate basis. If we have only fellowship as our goal, the group is corporately self-centered, or self-focused. Thus, it's no surprise that such groups are prone to division and discontent. This is because outreach and mission are the natural context within which fellowship should occur.

When a group of people occupy themselves with each other to the exclusion of the outside world, discontent is sure to follow. We should be unwilling to consider the option of handling outreach at the large meeting and limiting small groups to a fellowship role. The group may not engage in outreach at its weekly meeting, but they have to work together and pray together on some shared mission. However, this is a moot point, since the passage does not mention where evangelism did occur. On the other hand, in I Corinthians In cases where home fellowships are set up with no provision for church discipline, a very distressing and familiar pattern emerges.

Some people are attracted to small groups for the wrong reasons. There are those who come to exploit others, or simply to use the group to become the center of attention. The impact of such people is greater in a small group than it would be in a large meeting.

As a result, the whole character of the group can be altered to such an extent that it becomes difficult to attract new people, or even to hold the interest and loyalty of the productive members. The New Testament provides a solution to this kind of situation. If they are not responsive, a legitimate amount of pressure can be applied—even to the point of removing them from the group. The application of discipline should be gracious and suited to the needs of the individual as well as the group.

In order to prevent abuses or legalism, the eldership should be consulted in cases where an ultimatum may be issued. Churches worry about angering people if they practice discipline. This concern is legitimate.

But while we will anger some by exercising discipline, we endanger all by failing to exercise it. Worst of all, those being disciplined miss out on one of the important provisions for growth in the New Testament. Small group attendance is a privilege in the church. Participation should have conditions attached, such as no anti-social or disruptive behavior. Otherwise, the small groups become soft, unruly, and unappealing.

For some reason, churches generally devise and execute a plan for small groups that features only one kind of group. We did this too. But not any more! Now we see that family aged people need a different type of group than students or singles, etc. Why should a large church or even a small one have only one type of group? Every church should be different. The Bible does not allow the local church the option of telling its people to go away for their training.

According to Ephesians 4: When the leadership of a church decides not to have a small group ministry because its "laymen" are too ignorant, this is not an excuse - it is an admission of guilt! We find that most churches try to get by with a five or ten week training series which is inadequate for sophisticated leadership responsibilities. People will take longer training courses if they can break up the training into modules, and if they view taking these classes as fun. This is why we need to put our best communicators and leaders in as teachers in this training.

If a church already has an adequate supply of leaders who have some biblical knowledge, it would be preferable to hold this training while small groups are in progress, so they can immediately use the knowledge they learn. This prevents the accumulation of "dead knowledge" and also avoids creating the impression that Christian work is more difficult than it really is.

At the same time, we should be clear that completing the training course will not necessarily result in an assignment as a home group leader. That decision will have to also depend on other considerations such as character development, and a record of self-sacrificing service to others. Finally, aside from classroom training, each home group should develop it's own program of personal discipleship and ministry training Matthew The classes should be viewed as supplemental to the grass-roots discipleship practiced at the home group level.

In many cases, a home fellowship's existence is viewed as an end in itself. As mentioned earlier, this lack of mission-mindedness has a negative effect on the group.

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